James Brown Takes One for the Team

During the ten minutes or so I happened to tune in to the pregame of yesterday’s Jet-Colts championship game, I saw something that I could have happily lived my life without seeing: CBS pregame host James Browninterviewing the eTrade baby for his predictions on thegame:

Now, as you may know, I’m not much of a sports-on-TV watcher—a TV critic can’t watch everything, and sports is one of those things I gladly let slide to make time for the rest—so maybe this kind of thing is more common than I realize. Its not as though network sports maintains a church-state wall with advertisers, and I’m not exactly sure where hosting a pregame show falls on the pure-journalism spectrum anyway.

Still, and this is my considered opinion: Ew. Just ew.

If nothing else, this kind of thing would seem to undercut the credibility of CBS Sports. Or eTrade. If not because it was so embarrassing, then because, as it turned out, the baby, picking the Jets to shut down the Colts, was wrong. Bad baby!